While the pretenders rush to pile up nominations for their leadership bids, Save the Labour Party members have been keeping focussed on the Labour Party. David Gardner, chair of Greenwich and Woolwich CLP provides an overview here, challenges the key seats strategy and proposes a relaunch of Operation Toehold - which led to Labour's once dominant position in local government and the 1997 landslide. John Bull, leader of the Labour Group on NE Somerset Council is hosting a LibDem helpline, which will be advertised on line and in the local press this week (link to follow). I have been coordinating a questionnaire for Leadership contenders covering some of the the issues that the Westminster village tend to overlook, but which we hope will help define their democratic socialist credentials. The immediate tasks facing the Party were set out on the Save the Labour Party website here last week.
Tomorrow the National Executive Committee (NEC) will consider the rules and timetable for the Leadership election. Next Left is railing against me for mocking the idea of the election contest running on after Conference here.
The real challenges facing the Labour Party are organisational, deep rooted and long-standing. Save the Labour Party was in the vanguard immediately after the 2005 general election asking penetrating questions about party renewal. Its initiative along with Michael Meacher MP and the then editor of Tribune, Mark Seddon led to the LabOUR Commission. Its Interim Report, "Renewal - a two-way process for the 21st century" published in 2007 made a string of recommendations, most of which are as valid today as they were then.
Grassroots initiatives competing to be heard are flourishing, the latest Labour Values has just popped up in my InBox. What we now need is to press the National Executive Committee to recognise members' contributions, and get to work now on rebuilding a mass-membership party able to reach out, and renew its thinking in office as well as out. The Leadership wannabes can strut their stuff for as long as they like. But if they aren't signed up to party renewal now, then as far as I'm concerned, it could be 'None of the above.'